General strike cripples Syrian commerce

BEIRUT - Syrians closed their businesses and kept children home from school Monday as part of a general strike, a powerful show of civil disobedience to pressure President Bashar Assad to end his 9-month-old crackdown on a popular uprising.

The open-ended strike takes direct aim at the country's already ailing economy. It is designed to erode Assad's main base of support  the new and vibrant merchant classes who have benefited in recent years as the president opened up the economy.

Additionally, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Monday he understood 5,000 people had now been killed in the crackdown, not including deaths to security and state forces, Reuters reports.

If the economy continues to collapse, Assad could find himself with few allies inside the country, where calls are growing by the day for him to step down. The authoritarian president is already struggling under international isolation and suffocating sanctions.

It is difficult to gauge the strength of the strike because the regime has banned most foreign journalists and prevented local reporters from moving freely. But there were signs it was being widely observed in particular in centers of anti-government protest: the southern province of Daraa, the suburbs of the capital, Damascus, the northwestern region of Idlib and in the restive city of Homs.

The opposition wants the strike to remain in force until the regime pulls the army out of cities and releases thousands of detainees.

"Only bakeries, pharmacies and some vegetable shops are open," said one resident of Homs who asked that his name not be published for fear of reprisals. He said those stores stayed open because they sell essential goods.

In addition to the strike, he said, security was tight in Homs on Monday with agents deployed at every intersection. The crackle of gunfire erupted sporadically.

"There is a terrifying security deployment in Homs," he said.

Activists said a new round of clashes between Syrian troops and army defectors began Sunday with a major battle in the south and spread to new areas Monday, raising fears the conflict is spiraling toward civil war.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says new clashes between soldiers and defectors were reported Monday in Idlib in the north, and that fighting continued for a second day in southern Daraa province. Four members of the security forces were killed as a result of the clashes there, the Observatory said.

At least 16 people were reported killed nationwide on Monday, most of them in Homs, according to various activist networks.

On Sunday, army defectors set several military vehicles ablaze in a prolonged battle in Daraa province.

The uprising has grown increasingly violent in recent months as defecting soldiers fight back against the army and once-peaceful protesters take up arms to protect themselves against the military assault.

The U.N. itself says more than 4,000 people have been killed since March. The revolt has raised concerns of a regional conflagration, given Syria's strategic importance in the Middle East with alliances in Iran and with the Shiite militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The U.N. is deadlocked on Syria, and the Syrian government feels protected from the international community by Russia, which maintains important naval bases in Syria. Assad knows that the U.S. and NATO are loath to act militarily without the UN authorization, reports CBS News correspondent Pamela Falk. Russia even sent warships to Syria three weeks ago in a show of military force intended to forestall any NATO military action, despite Arab League, US and EU sanctions.

The U.N. Security Council has been deadlocked since the surprise double veto in November on a resolution that the entire Security Council had negotiated to condemn Syria.

Amid the violence, the government pushed ahead with municipal elections that the opposition has dismissed as a meaningless concession that falls far short of their demands for Assad to give up power.

Witnesses said turnout was low. The opposition does not consider the vote a legitimate concession by the regime because it coincides with the deadly crackdown on anti-government protesters. The regime had touted the vote as a reform measure because some new rules were introduced recently allowing more people to run in the election.

"The number of voters is very small," said Mohamed Saleh, an activist in Homs. He said security in the city was very tight and people were too scared to go out. "Even in normal days, people did not give much attention to municipal elections," he said.

Since the uprising began, Assad has made several gestures of reform. But after nine months, the opposition is demanding nothing less than the downfall of the regime.

As the violence continues, there are fears that the conflict could morph into a civil war and exacerbate long-standing sectarian tensions.

Syria is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, but Assad and the ruling elite belong to the tiny Alawite sect, which accounts for about 10 percent of the population.

The political domination by Alawites has bred seething resentments, which Assad tried to tamp down by enforcing the strictly secular ideology of his Baath Party.

But as the popular uprising surged, and Sunni army conscripts refused to fire on civilians, Assad called heavily upon his Alawite power base to crush the resistance, feeding sectarian tensions of the kind that fueled civil wars in neighboring Iraq and Lebanon.

Meanwhile, the new chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, who will begin the position in six months, told CBS News on Monday that the ICC cannot act on Syria without a referral from the U.N. Security Council because Syria is not a state party, regardless of the fact that she is "deeply concerned" about what is going on.

In the case of Libya, Bensouda said, the ICC acted on a referral when it issued an arrest warrant for Muammar Qaddafi because there was consensus on the Council and, regardless of the reports of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Russia and China continue to block any action.

The only reason that the U.N. human rights chief was able to recently brief the Security Council on Syria about the dramatic increase in civilian deaths, was because France threatened to call a procedural vote after Russia scoffed at the idea of a briefing, so the Council is a long way from action, unless some seriously diplomatic action takes place behind the scenes.